Some caches have stamps in for fun!

We’ve had a bit of a geocaching fest this last week. Rors has been at home on holiday and the weather’s been relatively dry so we’ve made an effort to do something fun with him for a few hours every day before we get bogged down with farm and other work. Also, we’ve had a bit of a heavy time of things lately so Chris and I have needed a bit more battery recharging than usual.

We enjoy geocaching – modern day treasure hunting basically – as it gets out on walks, which we like doing anyway, and gives them an extra element. They have a point beyond providing exercise. It’s rewarding to uncover the hidden cache and add your signature to the log. We’re Team Llamagem, by the way. Some of the caches consist of small containers that you can leave a treasure in and help yourself to one that’s been left by someone else. Our signature offering is a polished stone – the gem of our team name. It’s a slight shame that some geocachers out there think an out-of-date phonecard or ancient boiled sweet counts as a decent treasure to leave. It doesn’t!

You discover things out geocaching. This week we found an abandoned railway line quite close to home that we knew nothing about…

frescoes in an old chapel (Boussac-Bourg)…

ruins of ancient castles and fortifications …

enormous ant hills …

A huge, writhing mass of wood ants

farmers who don’t like public footpaths …

and evidence of fellow geocachers.

The geomobile

We’d seen the van of famous geocacher Zephyrsailor one day and left a note on her windscreen to say hi. Zephyrsailor is a trailblazer of a cacher and has set many hundreds around this area and beyond. She’s given us hours of fun tracking them down. Anyway, she invited us to join her next day to check one of her multicache trails near Montlucon and we were delighted to meet up with her, and her geodog Shiloh. She has another geodog, Freedom, as well. We had a great if exhausting morning with her, which called for an emergency refuelling at McDo’s on the way home as we were so hungry! That made the school holidays for Rors!

Zephyrsailor and Shiloh with his rucksacks

Today we set out on another geocaching session but there was an organised rando and VTT (mountain bike) ride going on along the trail so we turned it into a walk instead. You can’t be firkling around for caches with too many muggles (non-geocachers) around! We were at Malval which is a fascinating area with a famous ruined castle and mill, but I’ll tell you about those another time…